“Challenges remain, but goals are set for Sun” Mike Tarsala analyzes for MarketWatch.com.
Sun Really Does Have a Growth Plan
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I think it’s good Sun have some smaller troubles, in the long run it’ll only make them stronger.
One thing we know about Sun is that their innovative, have top notch software as well as hardware and have provided pretty much the foundation of the open source movement through all of their contributions.
Currently they’re facing what airline companies face with ryan air…. and the outcome will be that Sun is changing into a more efficient company resulting in better pricing. The customers gains from this and so does Sun…. let’s hope they shape up pretty soon…
I would bet on Google. Google is the new Microsoft. If Google succeeds in creating massive universal storage… woohoo! And Google attracts a lot of interesting people, Rob Pike for instance.
Sun? Hmm… a rather dull company. No that interesting. I mean, where’s the long term vision? Where’s the spirit? The cool vibes?
My opinion, my opinion!
My concern is that Sun are concentrating on cost reduction; in this round of lay-offs they’ve even said that they will be cutting R&D, the first time they’ve done that. now from what I’ve seen in the past, once a tech company starts to cut R&D to save money it’s all downhill.
On the plus side, the move to subscription based pricing is a Good Thing – if they can pull it off. Others have tried it before and it seems that it’s not at all popular with CFOs. I guess time will tell whether Sun can make it work.
The partnership with Microsoft is the best thing SUN could have done. Most poeple here i am sure look at it as SUN giving in to the “Evil” Empire. Personally i think its the smartest thing they have done yet. Reason being they are now starting to put the customers needs first. Now as a consumer in the future i may have the option to run SUN hardware all around in my shop and have full support for windows on my SUN hardware. Microsoft i am sure will help SUN’s software run better on windows also. I still think McNeally is a goof but he is not stupid. I wish the best for SUN.
My concern is that Sun are concentrating on cost reduction; in this round of lay-offs they’ve even said that they will be cutting R&D, the first time they’ve done that. now from what I’ve seen in the past, once a tech company starts to cut R&D to save money it’s all downhill.
But then again, SUN has always had a VERY high rate of investment vs. revenue. The fact is, SUN is simply prioritising. They’ve sat down and said, “what are the projects that are actually going to work vs. pie in the sky ideas which are nothing more than someone having an intellectual masturabation session?”.
The fact is, it isn’t the money, but the investment vs. results that should be looked at. If (hypothetically speaking) $12billion was injected into R&D but out of that only $3billion extra revenue is derived from that investment, is that really a good investment to begin with? of course not, its throwing good money after bad.
SUN realises that if they want to compete with Linux, they have to start competing on Linux’s terms, and that is selling x86-64 boxes loaded with Solaris, that is how SUN will be able to compete price-performance with Linux.
Then again, at the end of the day, what benefits SUN on the server will benefit Linux on the desktop. By breaking the link between the desktop and server, Microsoft will not be able to implement their “grand plan” of unifying the desktop and server into one huge ball of “stuff” the call “collaboration”.
The partnership with Microsoft is the best thing SUN could have done. Most poeple here i am sure look at it as SUN giving in to the “Evil” Empire. Personally i think its the smartest thing they have done yet. Reason being they are now starting to put the customers needs first. Now as a consumer in the future i may have the option to run SUN hardware all around in my shop and have full support for windows on my SUN hardware. Microsoft i am sure will help SUN’s software run better on windows also. I still think McNeally is a goof but he is not stupid. I wish the best for SUN.
Also, Microsoft can look at it from this angle; if a server is running Solaris with Microsoft IP riding on top, they’re still making money off it. You will find that gradually Microsoft will start to value their war chest of intellectual property a lot greater than their market share of the products.
With licensing IP, there is a continuous stream of revenue vs. the product sale where they have to continuously convince the customer to buy the next version.
As for the benefits to the end customer, well, first we could see a native media player for JDS which will allow one to play Real Networks media and Microsoft Windows Media, another could be the use of the new xml format for importing documents into OpenOffice.org, another could be the ability for sun to create tools that will automate the move from VB to Java.
There are a lot of positive possibilities that are opening for them, and I’m sure for all the anti-Microsoft rantings McNealy does, which he admits is not a serious jab, just taking the mickey out of Microsoft, he will put SUN ahead of his ego, and he has shown it through the management reshuffle at SUN.
Look at the quotes, the analysts are clear – Sun only has a near-term plan for reducing costs, nothing to increase sales and margins.
Sun has to slaughter some sacred cows. This is very very hard for any business to do. Look at DEC. Look at SGI. It is almost impossible to get a company in distress to abandon projects that have present-day cash flow but dim future prospects.
In Sun’s case this is clear – the Solaris/Sparc platform is dead. Now I expect a dozen or so responses telling me “Solaris on Sparc is a damn fine platform! Does Linux scale to blah blah blah???”.
I am not disputing that Solaris/Sparc is technically viable. I am disputing its COMMERCIAL viability.
Take Alpha. Take MIPS/IRIX. Technical vaibility and commercial viability are not always related. The proof is in the numbers – IBM and HP and well over two times the market presence in servers than Sun. Its time for Sun to admit that this platform is dead to the market.
Its not too late for Sun to become “the” linux company – a position that Novell, IBM and RedHat are all gunning for. Linux/Opteron/Java is their best bet.
No matter what Sun is going to be a much smaller company in the future, that is beyond dispute.
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Take Alpha. Take MIPS/IRIX. Technical vaibility and commercial viability are not always related. The proof is in the numbers – IBM and HP and well over two times the market presence in servers than Sun. Its time for Sun to admit that this platform is dead to the market.
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The problem is the following: sun is a hardware company. Solaris my be the best unix ever, I don’t know, and a lot of people don’t care.
I take the example of my university, a French engineer school. There are windows machines, and solaris machines. I personnally like unix machines, but solaris machines suck in the way they are used in my school. The graphic card sucks big time (impossible to use the command line, it is around 1s to refresh the screen when I write a new line !!!! It may be a configuration problem, I don’t know, it is on blade 100 and 150 machines). There is this awful wm which is 10 years old, and even window maker, which I compile on it, sucks on it because it is to slow.
Why solaris and not linux ? For one, and only one reason: the administrers are happy to have the exact same hardware everywhere. What are the benefit of solaris on client machines ? None. they don’t care about scalabilty and so on.
>> I would bet on Google. Google is the new Microsoft. If Google succeeds in creating massive universal storage… woohoo! And Google attracts a lot of interesting people, Rob Pike for instance.
Blah blah, you are parroting the blog you read.
Yahoo has a similar architecture to Google.
I’m sure Hotmail also has a huge farm of servers.
Having tens of thousands of servers is not really a blessing, the blogger who cited this was just having a hardware wet dream. When you have 100k boxes, its expensive, no matter how cheap you get per box. You know you have to pay for the electricity for these boxes too. And the cooling. These costs add up, they are nontrivial. At some point these shops all have to figure out how to do more with less, at some point the power bills alone for the servers will consume the revenues.
“SUN realises that if they want to compete with Linux, they have to start competing on Linux’s terms, and that is selling x86-64 boxes loaded with Solaris, that is how SUN will be able to compete price-performance with Linux.
Okay, I’ll ask the obvious questions. Why compete with Linux when they’re already selling Linux and in large quantities? Why put Solaris on the desktop when it’s optimized for server and not all that great a desktop OS?
My money is on IBM, but that is just me.
Sun will cut costs, the stock will go up, the execs will sell out, and the company will be sold.
It’s called “the last dance”. And Microsoft, after they’ve killed their enemy, always pays for the last dance.
Adios, Sun.
(IP: —.corp.yahoo.com) and (IP: —.bluebird.ibm.com) and of course the sun.com people, osnews gets some attention. 😀 No suprise the ibm.com fella roots for IBM. 🙂 I like Sun, and I wish them luck! Go Sun! IBM too. 🙂
> The graphic card sucks big time (impossible to use the command line, it is around 1s to refresh the screen when I write a new line !!!! It may be a configuration problem, I don’t know, it is on blade 100 and 150 machines).
Dude, you’re either trying post some serious FUD here or you just don’t have a clue and therefore shouldn’t be posting this sort of drivel in the first place. Sun Blade 100/150 should have more than acceptable performance for the tasks you describe. Hell I’m using a 9 year old Ultra 1 and it is still usable for the majority of desktop apps, Sun Blade 150 should be plenty usable by my book. Sun workstations may not look all that bright when you look at the clock speed, but that doesn’t mean you can discount them compared to PC’s.
Okay, I’ll ask the obvious questions. Why compete with Linux when they’re already selling Linux and in large quantities? Why put Solaris on the desktop when it’s optimized for server and not all that great a desktop OS?
The fact is, they don’t sell Linux server in large quantities. The x86-64 version will be the leveraging tool that SUN will use with customers who may consider leaving for Linux from Solaris SPARC; they can offer the same software on a cheaper platform and thus the customer is able to move to the cheaper platform without SUN loosing a valuable customer.
As for the assertion of running Solaris on the desktop, who said anything about that? where in the original post did I ensinuate that I desired Solaris to run on a desktop?
Unless you’ve been living under some sort of rock for the last year, SUN has bad is *crystal clear* about their future direction; Solaris x86/SPARC on the server, Linux on the desktop. Ontop of both these operating systems will be JDS which will provide a unified, end to end (server to desktop) desktop.
With this they can not only sell Linux/JDS for the desktop, but they can also provide a great, low cost thin client solution using x86-64/Opteron at the centre of it with Sun Ray clients hook off it.
That doesn’t get into their software stack which includes the SUN application server, directory server and so forth.
What does this boil down to? SUN is providing a one stop shop for all your software and hardware needs. I’ll accept their marketing is terrible, but the information already out there is quite clear about the direction they’re taking.
Its not too late for Sun to become “the” linux company – a position that Novell, IBM and RedHat are all gunning for. Linux/Opteron/Java is their best bet.
So doing what everyone else is doing is the same as making money? I guess you never worked with marketing, but DIFFERENTIATION is the method of survival and Sun is no 1 in differentiation…
Let Novell and IBM go down the Linux drain and compete with insecure software at a high development rate with lousy support and non consistent solutions which never stabilize….
Sun goes for stability and reliability, they’re alone in that field as a commercial player… Nice position aye?
“Let Novell and IBM go down the Linux drain and compete with insecure software at a high development rate with lousy support and non consistent solutions which never stabilize….
Sun goes for stability and reliability, they’re alone in that field as a commercial player… Nice position aye?”
If that were the reality, Sun would have a monopoly instead of being on the rocks and being forced to settle with MS just to stay alive. Who’s going down the drain again? I don’t see IBM or Novell execs exchanging hockey jerseys with Balmer.
“I don’t see IBM or Novell execs exchanging hockey jerseys with Balmer.”
That’s because they are already in bed with Microsoft, and have been for quite a while. I rather trade shirts with Balmer then sleep with him.
Don’t worry your pretty little head. If Scott or Jonathan need your business acumen I’m sure they will call you.